1-in-10 Irish devices infected with viruses, but that’s better than EU average

9 Feb 2016

New findings from the European Union (EU) on the spread of computer viruses on the continent has revealed that a tenth of all Irish device owners have received a virus at some point, but that’s better than the EU average.

The EU report was looking at member states over the past five years and their susceptibility to the myriad of viruses that exist out there that can infect any of the devices we use on a daily basis.

According to its overall findings, the threat remains a serious issue, with the average figure across all of the EU member states (except for Romania) showing that 25pc of devices have experienced security issues in 2015 at some point.

Problems in Croatia

Seemingly, the country that has found itself on the end of numerous security issues – totalling nearly half of its devices – is Croatia, whose citizens were found to have 43pc of their devices compromised last year.

Similarly high-ranking on the list were Hungary (39pc), Portugal (36pc) and the island state of Malta (34pc).

However, on the opposite end of the scale, Ireland was one of the least affected by security issues, with just 14pc of internet users experiencing an issue, with the Czech Republic shown to have been the least affected overall at 10pc.

EU virus statistics

In terms of viruses specifically in 2015 compared with 2010, the EU as an average appears to be doing better in terms of the number of devices that have been infected.

On average in 2010, 31pc of devices were shown to have been infected with some form of malicious software, but this has decreased to 21pc in 2015.

In fact, across all the member states, the only nation to have seen an increase in affected devices is Croatia, which saw an increase from 33pc in 2010 to 41pc in 2015.

Meanwhile, Ireland was shown to have decreased its number of affected devices from 15pc to 11pc, but this pales in comparison to Slovakia, which has reduced its number from 47pc in 2010 to 9pc in 2015.

A number of internet users from member states also said that they would refrain from engaging in certain online activities over security fears that their details could be stolen, most noticeably in Romania (35pc), Sweden (34pc) and Portugal (30pc).

This compares with 13pc of Irish internet users who said they wouldn’t use it for buying goods online, as well as 10pc who feared being compromised while using e-banking.

Worm on a keyboard image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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